Tech giants unite to revolutionize AI infrastructure with optical interconnects

Six major tech companies have joined forces to launch the Optical Scale-up Consortium. The group includes AMD, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and OpenAI. Their goal is to develop open standards for AI infrastructure through advanced optical interconnect technology. The consortium's work is built on the Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement (OCI MSA). This framework sets out to create a 'plug-and-play' system with interoperable optical interfaces. The aim is to simplify how data centres connect and scale.

The roadmap outlines two key phases. The first, OCI Gen1, supports 4× 50 Gbps NRZ (non-return-to-zero) technology. The second, OCI Gen2, pushes capacity to 400 Gbps bidirectional links. Future plans include scaling to 3.2 terabits per second (Tbps) per fibre and beyond. The design uses wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) alongside NRZ modulation. This approach targets better performance, lower latency, and reduced costs. The consortium also backs multiple form factors, such as pluggable, co-packaged, and integrated optics (CPO). Brian Amick, AMD's Senior Vice President of Technology & Engineering, has publicly endorsed the initiative. He highlighted its role in establishing open industry specifications. The project is seen as a major step toward a hyperscaler-driven open ecosystem for optical interconnects.

The Optical Scale-up Consortium has set clear technical targets for data centre connectivity. Its open specifications could shape how AI infrastructure scales in the coming years. For now, no further members have been announced beyond the six founding companies.